Fine introduction to the feminist world of Ferrante
My Brilliant Friend
National Theatre, SE1 ★★★★★
The Neapolitan Novels by Elena Ferrante – one of the publishing phenomena of the decade – have been translated from a voluminous quartet to a two-part affair you can see on separate nights or (better) back to back, at matinee and evening performances. It’s as if a luxuriant summer holiday read has been compressed to the length of time required for a return flight between Luton and Naples. So hats off, for sheer chutzpah, to playwright April de Angelis, whose skilful adaptation this is, and director Melly Still, whose no less formidable task has been to make the script live and breathe. They pulled everything together in 2017 at the Rose, Kingston – a coup for that theatre – and despite mixed reviews, the National has now taken the show into its fold.
Rightly so – it’s not just the femalecentric narrative and associated creative talent involved, helping redress the theatre’s long-standing gender imbalance. Such an epic tale, charting the lives and friendship of two Naples girls (Lenu Greco and Lila Cerullo) from the post-war era to the cyber age, belongs on the Olivier stage.
There are obvious complaints to be made about this condensed version – not least that everything moves at such a lick, meaning incidents and secondary characters can blur. Where you can lose yourself in a book (and not get disorientated), there are moments in this production where you may feel at sixes and sevens.
But the adaptation has such a core confidence of purpose and cohesion of artistry that what gets sidelined (or missed out) feels less like a deficiency and more like an invitation to explore the original. At its considerable best, My Brilliant Friend creates a sense of a teeming city – for Ferrante, the city is its people. And thanks to the assured, nuanced and unflagging lead performances, it also achieves a focus on the two bright sparks whose character-forming struggles speak for generations of women who fought for emancipation and fulfilment.
We begin where the novel sequence ends – with the unwrapping by Lenu (Niamh Cusack) of a parcel containing two dolls. This encounter with the past – the tease of it (has it been sent by her estranged and deliberately evanescent pal Lila?) – casts her back six decades to when these two playthings were flung down into a cellar, requiring rescue, their first childhood bond forged amid a nightmarish adventure.
Everything proceeds from this point as if in hallucinogenic flashback, one moment bleeding into the next, the momentum assisted by a simple, yet ingenious design (by Soutra Gilmour) that uses “airstair”-style steps, pulled into multiple configurations, conjuring cheek by jowl tenements, shops, bridges and tunnels.
The brightness of these workingclass girls – Catherine Mccormack’s Lila, especially – is conveyed through their articulacy and penetrating gazes. They’re up against particular male brutality – beatings, marital rape and domestic abuse. But there’s the broader weight of male chauvinism and societal expectation. Lenu barely manages to escape through writing; Lila is less fortunate, though the question is left hanging as to the personal cost for Lenu as she turns her roots into literary fodder. Ultimately, this production should delight the books’ many fans and serve as a fine introduction to the richly conceived, unforcedly feminist world of Ferrante.